# What is a US military group
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-us-military-group/974761
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [November 11, 2022, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-us-military-group/974761 "2022-11-11T18:53:31Z")
**Posts on this page:** 16
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)
#### Post date: [November 11, 2022, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-us-military-group/974761/1 "2022-11-11T18:53:31Z")
Reading about Chile and the 1973 coup, I’ve come across a “SITREP” by Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick J. Ryan, headed NAVY SECTION, UNITED STATES MILITARY GROUP, CHILE, CASTILLA 141-V
VALPARISO, CHILE. His 2013 obituary notes he was Deputy Chief, US Military Group, in Chile at the time of the coup, and his “SITREP” references his living in Vina del Mar then. He is also described in another document as a naval attache at the time, and as a liaison to people involved in the coup.
Is a US Military Group in this context an official designation? What does it denote?
Thanks
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### Author:  [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)
#### Post date: [November 11, 2022, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-us-military-group/974761/2 "2022-11-11T19:00:40Z")
According to [this](https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Experience/Military-Units/Army/#army), an Army Group consists of 4-5 Filed Armies of at least 400,000 soldiers. The only larger unit is an Army Region consisting of a million plus soldiers, which only comes into play during a large-scale war.
“A group consists of four or five field armies and between 400,000 and 1 million soldiers. They’re commanded by a general and are considered self-sufficient for indefinite periods. They’re usually responsible for planning and directing campaigns in particular geographic areas. To differentiate them from field armies, groups are usually written with Arabic numerals (example - 12th Army Group) as opposed to having their number written out.”
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### Author:  [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)
#### Post date: [November 11, 2022, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-us-military-group/974761/3 "2022-11-11T19:18:55Z")
That’s an Army Group. Something we will never see again. The OP is asking about something completely different.
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### Author:  [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)
#### Post date: [November 11, 2022, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-us-military-group/974761/4 "2022-11-11T19:19:24Z")
It can’t be that; if the US had 400,000 troops in Chile in 1973, somebody would have noticed!
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### Author:  [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)
#### Post date: [November 11, 2022, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-us-military-group/974761/5 "2022-11-11T19:21:14Z")
Perhaps there was a part of a Group in Chile? If not, they aren’t referring to a US Army Group.
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### Author:  [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)
#### Post date: [November 11, 2022, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-us-military-group/974761/6 "2022-11-11T19:28:33Z")
Should have noted, the author was in the US Marine Corps
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [November 11, 2022, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-us-military-group/974761/7 "2022-11-11T19:37:02Z")
ISTR the term meaning “all the U.S. military personnel in Chile.” This would include trainers, advisors and the like “assisting” Chile’s military. What other duties they might have had is unknown at this time and likely still classified.
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [November 11, 2022, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-us-military-group/974761/8 "2022-11-11T19:50:50Z")
Plenty of [Google hits](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22us+military+group+chile%22&rlz=1C1RXQR_enUS1021US1022&oq=%22us+military+group+chile%22&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i160l2.9396j1j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8), but none giving any sort of official structure. It appears to have consisted of Army, Navy and USMC personnel more or less loosely attached to the embassy.
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### Author:  [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)
#### Post date: [November 11, 2022, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-us-military-group/974761/9 "2022-11-11T20:07:48Z")
This is consistent with the document and other sources: not exactly murky, not exactly “here’s a list of everyone and what they do.”
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### Author:  [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)
#### Post date: [November 11, 2022, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-us-military-group/974761/10 "2022-11-11T20:16:02Z")
This. A working group of odds-and-ends, drawn from different units here-and-there. It is task-specific and has no formal designation (Company/Troop/Battery/Battalion/Regiment/Brigade/etc.).
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### Author:  [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)
#### Post date: [November 11, 2022, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-us-military-group/974761/11 "2022-11-11T20:33:23Z")
Army Group is the top level in the hierarchy that starts down at section, then platoon and goes up to division, corps, army, army group. The Russians used the equivalentísh term ‘Front’. A Russian WWII-size army group would be equal to about 5% of Chile’s entire population. So, its probably not that.
The type of Army Group the US had in Chile was likely to be an ad hoc arrangement of all the troops and units under control of a local commander, and may have included some brought in for a week to do one specific thing.
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [November 11, 2022, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-us-military-group/974761/12 "2022-11-11T20:39:19Z")
> [@Banksiaman](#):
>
> The type of Army Group the US had in Chile
Military Group, not Army Group.
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### Author:  [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)
#### Post date: [November 11, 2022, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-us-military-group/974761/13 "2022-11-11T20:49:01Z")
> [@Kropotkin](#):
>
> He is also described in another document as a naval attache at the time, and as a liaison to people involved in the coup.
This, to me, means that he was attached to the American embassy as a military attache under the auspices of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Military attaches liaise with local ranking military officers as advisors and to exchange information. There are likely other duties that are not generally common knowledge. My source for this is the ten years I spent with the U.S. Department of State.
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### Author:  [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)
#### Post date: [November 11, 2022, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-us-military-group/974761/14 "2022-11-11T20:52:16Z")
This might be a related concept:
> **[Military Assistance Advisory Group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Assistance_Advisory_Group)**
>
> Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) is a designation for United States military advisors sent to other countries to assist in the training of conventional armed forces and facilitate military aid. Although numerous MAAGs operated around the world throughout the 1940s–1970s, including in Yugoslavia after 1951, the most famous MAAGs were those active in Southeast Asia before and during the Vietnam War. Typically, the personnel of MAAGs were considered to be technical staff attached to, an In...
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### Author:  [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)
#### Post date: [November 11, 2022, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-us-military-group/974761/15 "2022-11-11T21:17:53Z")
Oops - that will teach me to read and watch TV at the same time.
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### Author:  [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)
#### Post date: [November 11, 2022, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-us-military-group/974761/16 "2022-11-11T21:24:19Z")
This is what I was thinking, but it was all speculation. Thanks, folks, for this.